Technological support in bioprocesses market uptake
One of the key challenges in the process of developing new bioproducts is to overcome the transition period in which a technology under development is envisaged as promising
CENER (The National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain) is convinced of the need to move towards a circular bioeconomy, in which the society is capable of valorising the wastes produced in an integral and cascade mode. On that regard, CENER is developing different technologies for this purpose in its Biorefinery and Bioenergy Centre (BIO2C), semi-industrial pilot scale test facility able to develop production processes for bioproducts, solid biofuels, advanced liquid or gaseous biofuels, as well as biorefinery concepts integrating different valorization routes, as an intermediate step between laboratory and the industrial scale-up of these technologies.
One of the key challenges in the process of developing new bioproducts is to overcome the transition period in which a technology under development is envisaged as promising, but too novel to validate its commercial potential and, therefore, to attract the necessary capital to be invested in order to achieve its final development and application. Indeed, biotech companies and startups, as well as technology and R&D centers demand support in order to ensure the project maturity degree required by the industry, given that their technology needs to be optimized, validated and scaled up in order to penetrate the market in different sector such as chemical, agricultural or food and feed.
In order to cover this gap, and thus accompany and give support to the biotech industry, the Biochemical Processes Unit of the BIO2C offers processdevelopment services, scaling up and production of first pre-commercial batches. These facilities include pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation units from laboratory scale to several cubic meters devoted to demonstrate the valorization of different biomasses. These type of alliances allow companies to demonstrate their technology in a faster and cheaper way, while at the same time they can count on state-of-the-art facilities, with experienced personnel, prepared and capable of solving the challenges raised by this phase of the R&D. All this complemented of course with ad-hoc advice along the entire project lifecycle, and a final economic and environmental assessment.
With proven capacity to be adapted to the to the feedstock and the target bioproducts CENER holds experience in the valorisation of cereal straw or crop & forest residues, food industry by-products, organic fraction of municipal solid waste or sewage sludge, into advanced biofuels, or bio-based products such as bio-based polymers, bioestimulants, biopesticides, bio-based chemicals or antioxidants among others.
As project examples, we have carried out pilot productions of agrobiologicals, enzymes, microorganisms or food products; scaled up hydrolysis for the recovery of biowaste into biostimulants or hydrolysis and fermentation of organic waste for the production of biocompostable and biodegradable polymers, in projects such as IMPRIMED, SCALIBUR, OLEAF4VALUE, BIOMEF, NEXTGENROADFUELS, BIORESCUE o PERCAL.